In one conventional communication protocol offload arrangement, one or more operations that typically are executed by a host's general purpose processor to carry out a communication protocol, instead may be executed by protocol offload circuitry in the host. In this conventional arrangement, such operations include fetching data stored in host memory and storing the data in local memory comprised in the offload circuitry. The offload circuitry then determines the size of a communication protocol packet that is intended to comprise a portion of the data, and the portion of the data to be comprised in the packet. Thereafter, the offload circuitry fetches this portion of the data from the local memory and stores it in a temporary buffer. The offload circuitry then generates the packet by appending a protocol header to the portion of the data in the temporary buffer, calculating the checksum of the packet, and inserting the checksum into the header.
Unfortunately, in this conventional arrangement, the fetching of the portion of the data from the local memory and storing thereof in the temporary buffer may involve a significant latency that may significantly increase the time that may be consumed in carrying out these conventional operations. Also unfortunately, in this conventional arrangement, the temporary buffer memory has a size that is sufficient to store the largest communication protocol packet that is expected to be generated by the offload circuitry; this may increase the size and cost of the offload circuitry.
Although the following Detailed Description will proceed with reference being made to illustrative embodiments, many alternatives, modifications, and variations thereof will be apparent to those skilled in the art. Accordingly, it is intended that the claimed subject matter be viewed broadly, and be defined only as set forth in the accompanying claims.